The Red Wolf Conspiracy (41 page)

5 Modoli 941

53rd day from Etherhorde

The black rat was fighting for his life.

He had barely escaped the stomping heel of the tailor, and the teeth of Master Mugstur's Holy Guard, by diving back into the storm-pipe through the ixchel's door. There was no escape at the top of the pipe with the boy seated at Drellarek's door. So Felthrup had run the other way, down and aft, toward the stern transoms and the roaring of the sea. Other rats were plunging in the same direction, blind with fear. At first they ignored him. But the wind grew louder, nearer—and suddenly there was the mouth of the storm-pipe, wide open to the heaving, green-black harbor.

It was then that the rats turned on him.

“Cursed Felthrup!” they cried. “Weird, sick, Angel-maimed! He shouted at the Master! He brought the crawlies to cut off our heads! Kill him, kill before he strikes again!”

“You're wrong!” Felthrup begged. “I never meant you harm! Mugstur's the wicked one! He enslaves you!”

But they would not listen: horror was stealing what little reason they had. Felthrup saw what would happen next. The rats ahead and behind would close in, jaws snapping, making him turn at bay. He would fight them off for a while—they were cowardly enough—but when he grew tired they would bite and hold fast. Then he would be torn to shreds.

In that split second he regretted his woken state no more. His mind was fast—lightning-fast, too fast for any normal life, but perfect for now. He saw his options at a glance. Beg for mercy and die. Feign death and die. Fight back uphill against numberless rats sworn to kill him, to say nothing of the humans, and die.

Or do what he feared most: risk drowning, face the sea. That way too death was overwhelmingly likely. It was simply not guaranteed.

Five rats between him and the pipe's mouth.
Five cousins to slay. Horror of horrors, to fill one's mouth with murder
. He began.

They were expecting more tears and hysteria, not resolute killing. He went through the first two like a spear and grappled with the third in a scratching, tearing blood-blind frenzy that made it dive under him and squeal away up the pipe. The last two had backed up to the very lip, so their tails waved in the open air. They were big creatures, squared off and ready for his charge. Felthrup looked at their broad shoulders, their bared teeth. Their paws.

He leaped backward, past the bodies of the dead rats. The two at the pipe's end hissed, snapped their jaws. What was he waiting for?

The ship pitched downward, and then they saw: too late. Felthrup shoved the corpses at them with all his might. Slick with blood, the pipe afforded no grip. One of the rats began to scrabble over the bodies, but Felthrup pressed on mercilessly. Living rat and dead fell together to the waves.

The second rat was slipping, too. But even as it did so it gave a last lurch and clamped its jaws on Felthrup's bad leg. There it swung, teeth biting bone, as Felthrup struggled to shake it loose without falling himself. Unimaginable pain! And from behind him came the sound of still more rats, closing in.

He was oozing toward the sea. He could not reach the biting rat. From the corner of his eye he saw that he'd been right, there was a way out, two other pipes that emptied alongside this one.
Wise Felthrup, so good at everything
—

He fell.

It was a sickening plunge. The waves yawned like a pit. Mindlessly the other rat kept gnawing him in midair. They glanced off the
Chathrand's
sternpost, barely missed being dashed to pieces on the rudder-head and vanished into the pale froth of the ship's wake. The other rat, shocked by the frigid water, released him—but when they surfaced, there it was paddling toward him, delirious with hate. With only three good legs Felthrup could barely swim. He tried in vain to put distance between them.

“Think, brother!” he squeaked. “Why fight now?”

“To hurt you more in death, Angel's foe!”

“No angel—
ECH! PHHT!
—would want such a thing!”

They were both half drowned, scrabbling up and down waves like collapsing hillsides, watching the
Chathrand
slip farther out of reach. The other rat was snapping at his toes.
It's mad, utterly mad
, Felthrup realized—but the thought gave him sudden hope.

Turning, he deliberately let the rat catch hold of the stump of his tail—a good, solid mouthful. Then he held his breath, and dived.

As he guessed, the other rat again kept its jaws locked. But it was not expecting to be pulled underwater. Nor could it fully close its mouth. It gurgled. Felthrup did not bother to strike at it—he merely writhed and shook. Instinctively the other rat bit harder. But air was bubbling through its lips, and the sea was leaking in. By the time the rat saw what was happening it had nothing to do but drown.

An eternity passed before it died. Felthrup struggled upward, still yards beneath the surface, kicking at the dead face. Then he saw his own mistake—and knew his life was over. The rat had died with locked jaws. Its lungs were flooded. It would sink like a stone, and he would go with it.

Why fight now}
His own question mocked him. What was the point of it all? He could chew off the rest of his tail and bleed to death, watching the ship depart. What good was that sort of death, this sort of life, the torture of intelligence? Better to sleep, rest as he had not rested in years, let the thinking stop—

A dark shape rose beneath him. It was an animal, about the size of a hound, but blunt-faced and whiskered. A seal! A great black seal! In an instant the creature pushed him to the surface.

“Steady, Felthrup my lad! I won't let you drown.”

“PHLHHHHHPT!”

“You're quite welcome.”

A woken seal! Felthrup had been rescued by a being like himself!

“Don't claw me, lad. I've got to get that corpse off your tail.”

Some foul crunching noises, and the skull of the dead rat broke and fell away. Then the seal turned on its back and rose, and Felthrup was lifted from the water on its chest.

He was almost in tears. “Brother, savior! Bless you, all Gods and stars and angels and whatever there may be!”

The seal might have smiled slightly, but it said no word. Its eyes were trained on the
Chathrand
, now a good hundred yards away.

“How did you find me?” Felthrup asked.

“Your voice carried. Not far, but far enough.”

“Good luck! Oh great good luck, at last! Oh beloved master seal! How can I ever repay you?”

“By not calling me such nonsense. I have a name. You shall know it presently.”

Felthrup forced his mouth shut. The seal was obviously wise, and did not like his chatter. He looked himself over. He was not badly hurt, for both his wounded paw and stump-tail were rather leathery and tough. The salt in his wounds burned like fire, though, and at the same time he was quaking with cold. And the ship was still moving away.

“Good sir,” he said in what he hoped was a more dignified voice, “you have saved my life. It is yours, to do whatsoever you like with.”

“Don't need it—got my own.”

“Indisputably, sir. But I should beg the liberty of commenting on a difference between your splendid form and my own, so commonplace and ugly. Rats can swim, you see, but nowhere near so well as yourself.”

The seal scratched behind an ear with a flipper.

Felthrup went on. “I can assure you—ha ha, look, they've spread more sail!—that on the best of days I could not swim ashore from here. And perhaps even you would find it difficult to bear me so far.”

Silence. The
Chathrand
was now at least a quarter mile off.

“That is to say—please pardon my bluntness, sir, we rats are so ill mannered—I must board that ship, or drown.”

“Quite true,” said the seal.

Felthrup gave up. There was no misunderstanding. He was stranded on the chest of a taciturn seal, probably driven mad by thinking (like Mugstur, like himself), who might tire of this game at any moment, roll over and depart. But at least there was someone to talk to.

“Have you been woken long, brother?” he asked.

“All my life,” said the seal.

At this Felthrup forgot himself entirely. Nearly dancing on the stomach of the seal, he cried, “You were born awake! Like a human being! Oh glory, glory, wondrous world!”

The seal glanced briefly at Felthrup. Its dark eyes softened. “In my own world there is a children's tale,” it said, looking back at the ship, “about a man who woke in prison. He opened his eyes from a dream that seemed the length of his life to find himself in a pitch-black cage. It was so dark he could not see his hand before his face, so small he could not sit upright. He lay trapped in this prison for ages. He thought at times that he could hear sounds beyond the cage, but no one answered his calls. He was entirely alone.

“After a long, long time, the man found a tiny latch with one fingernail. Once he freed the latch, a door swung open and joyfully the man squeezed through. Beyond, what he found was another cage—but this one was a bit larger, and had a little light from gray windows the size of sugar cubes. In the shadows he found that he was not alone. A woman was moving about the cage, feeling the walls. They embraced, and she cried, ‘Welcome, brother! You can help me look for a door!’

“Together, in time, they found a second door, and beyond it, a still larger and brighter cage. In this cage some fair green moss grew in one corner, and four people were busy searching the walls.

“Do you understand, Felthrup? True waking is not like rising from your bed, or nest, or warren. It is emerging from one cage into a larger, brighter, less lonely cage. It is a task that is never done.”

The black rat's heart was pounding, but he could not speak.

“No animal, no man, no thousand-year-old mage is perfectly awake,” said the seal. “In fact, merely to think so is to fall a little asleep. Fear those who tell you otherwise—help them if you can. Ah! There she is!”

Felthrup followed his gaze: in one of the stern windows of the departing
Chathrand
, a tiny light had appeared. It winked out, gleamed anew, fell dark once more. This happened three times.

“Now for it, lad,” said the seal, and dived.

Once again Felthrup found himself swimming. “Help!” he cried. But the seal was gone, deep below, out of sight. “Help! Help!” There was no help. Felthrup paddled in a circle, aching everywhere, his nose barely clearing the waves. He would not last a minute.

But he did not have to. Some upwelling of water made him look down: the seal was rocketing toward him from the depths at astonishing speed. Before Felthrup could even cry out it broke the surface, catching him in its jaws as it leaped, and rose high above the water. Up and up they went. Stupefied, Felthrup watched the seal's teeth flatten and fuse into a long, sharp mass, its cheeks erupt with feathers, its small flippers stretch into wings.

It had become a bird—a great black pelican. In its ample throat, Felthrup was now riding like a rabbit in a hunter's sack. Below—dizzying sight!—he glimpsed sea and rocks and mainland, yellow lamps in Uturphe windows, a flash of lightning in the east. Then the bird croaked savagely and dived for the
Chathrand
.

They came in fast, right at the gallery windows. When they were but twenty feet away Felthrup saw that the bobbing light was a candle in a girl's upraised hand. Quickly she threw open the window and jumped aside. The pelican slowed at the last instant, fanning its wings. A final
thump
, and they were still.

Two dogs began to bark.

“Soaked!” the girl was shouting. “Look at this rug, will you? What on earth will I tell Syrarys?”

The pelican rose, wobbled and spat Felthrup onto the bearskin, along with a last gallon of seawater.

“Tell her you left a window open,” it said.

Felthrup found himself looking up through a curtain of golden hair. The Treaty Bride, Thasha Isiq herself, was kneeling beside him, stroking his soggy fur. Then she turned to his rescuer and smiled.

“I like you better as a mink, Ramachni.”

He was soon a mink again, but it was many minutes before Felthrup could be persuaded to stop squeaking his thanks. As Thasha hung the rug over the washbasin, he limped about the stateroom, praising everything—her kindness, Ramachni's magic, her mother's necklace, a shiny spoon. Jorl and Suzyt followed him about like twin elephants: they had taken an immediate liking to the rat.

When Thasha had mopped up as best she could, they all squeezed into her cabin. Thasha closed the door.

“Now,” said Ramachni, “tell me what I dread to know, Felthrup Stargraven. For I heard you one midnight, weeks ago, addressing your kind:
I could tell you another story, brothers, about a monster
of a man who soon will walk this ship. Niriviel the falcon spoke of him, proud as a prince. But you'd never believe me
. If only they had let you talk! For I never heard your voice again, until tonight.”

“That is because the ixchel locked me in a pipe to die!” said Felthrup, his voice rising in pain again. “They would not listen; they assumed I was just a plain, nosy, execrable, humdrum rat. And when the fair Diadrelu rebuked her brother and took my side, what did I do? I led them to Mugstur, and for all I know he killed them.”

He burst into tears again, and the mastiffs whined in solidarity.

“Hush!” said Thasha. “Diadrelu's alive—at least Pazel thought so. But he also said her people would kill anyone who talked about them.”

“That is the code of the ixchel, Lady,” sniffed Felthrup. “You kill
them
whenever you find them, so they try to kill you before you can reveal their presence. Rats would do the same, if they could. Master Mugstur plans to try.”

“We will speak of Mugstur later,” said Ramachni. “But you should thank him when next you cross paths: it was the noise of his assault that led me back to you—just in time, as it proved. But speak! Who is this evil man you told your brethren of?”

Then Felthrup told them of the falcon's boasts: about the Shaggat Ness, and the hidden gold, and the Emperor's plan to drive the Mzithrinis to war.